Originally Posted by
Bluedriver
This seems like a more significant slow down than the normal summer lull. Which agrees with the reduced growth rate advertised by the company earlier this year. Also, I don't recall the exact dates but we had exceeded 3500 pilots 4-6 months ago. Then dropped below 3500. Now barely above again so no I wouldn't call this exactly the same as other summer lulls.
Management dropped the ball and miscalculated their pilot needs which is why we saw a bigger slowdown.
We were expanding ASM, so they did a pilot projection which would have called for more aircraft and pilots. When they realized the ASM increase would be from switching to 321's from 320s, they realized they didn't need as many more pilots so they corrected with the decrease in hiring numbers. Then summer hit with 4-6 hour EDCTs along with our poor utilization of reserve pilots (thanks to the only good thing about our reserve rules) and got hosed over the summer. They have since ratcheted up hiring numbers for the fall to help mitigate.